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Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Moore v. Sweet, 2017 ONCA 182

[104] Most of the authorities in which courts have been willing to override a beneficiary designation can be explained on the basis of an agreement between one of the claimants and the insured that removed the insured’s ability to designate a later beneficiary.[6] As noted earlier, Shannon involved a separation agreement in which the insured undertook to name his first spouse as a beneficiary irrevocably. In Bielny, the separation agreement required the insured to name the children of the first marriage as irrevocable beneficiaries. In Fraser v. Fraser, the trial judge found on the facts that the terms of the separation agreement requiring the insured to maintain the plaintiff as beneficiary were tantamount to an irrevocable designation.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Scotland v. Canada (Attorney General), 2017 ONSC 4850

[3] Although his detention has been reviewed on a monthly basis by the Immigration Division (“ID”) of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (“IRB”) pursuant to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c. 27 (“IRPA”) and Regulations thereunder, and despite the fact that counsel for the Attorney General of Canada puts forward no substantive reason for his continued detention, Mr. Scotland cannot seem to get himself out of custody. He appears enmeshed in an endless circuit of mistakes, unproven accusations, and technicalities.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Horsefield v. Economical Mutual Insurance Company, 2017 ONSC 4868

[47] The plaintiffs submit that the source of the ignition of the gasoline or gasoline fumes which escaped in the course of the work performed by the Tenant on his motor vehicle is unknown and that the source of the ignition constitutes an additional cause of the fire. The fire ensued quickly after the gas tank fell. There is no allegation that the ignition was somehow an independent, negligent cause of the fire. The plaintiffs also allege that there were additional and concurrent causes such as the Tenant’s failure to have a fire extinguisher available. These allegations do not constitute intervening acts of negligence that severed the chain of causation. In my view, the loss claimed by the plaintiffs can be traced directly back to the negligent maintenance performed by the Tenant and such loss would not have occurred but for the maintenance performed.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Houda-Pepin c. Leduc, 2017 QCCA 1212

[16] Ce que la requérante recherche n’est rien de moins qu’une reprise intégrale de l’analyse des faits, la tenue d’un nouveau débat, que je lui offre l’occasion de convaincre la Cour que la juge aurait dû ou qu’elle aurait pu conclure autrement.
[17] Évidemment, il ne saurait être question d’acquiescer à cette invitation, le rôle d’une cour d’appel n’étant pas de refaire ou de reprendre le procès[26].

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

* As of January 2014 we measure the total amount of time spent on the pages rather than simply the number of hits; as well, a case once mentioned won’t appear again for three months.

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